Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

water, the ground floor of the house had been built seven feet above grade.
    That December, the river started to overflow west of town. When the water began to rise in a serious way, my parents made plans in case the river should invade our house. My mother decided that she would pack our books and her fine china in a small den off the master bedroom. Each piece of the china had a gold rim and then a band of roses. It was not nearly as good as it was old, but the service had been her mother’s and was precious to her.
    As she packed the china with great care, she told me, “You must treasure the things people you love have cherished. It keeps you in touch with them.”
    I didn’t really understand her concern. I’d never owned anything I cared all that much about. Still, planning for disaster held considerable fascination for me.
    The plan was to move upstairs when the river reached the seventh of the steps that led to the front porch. We would keep a rowboat in the downstairs so that we could get from room to room. The one thing we would not do was leave the house. My father, the town’s only doctor, felt he had to be where sick people could find him.
    The muddy water rose higher and higher until at last the critical mark was reached. We worked for days carrying things upstairs, until late one afternoon the water edged over the threshold and poured into our house. I watched it from the safety of the stairs, amazed at how rapidly it rose.
    Every day I sat on the landing and watched the river rise. My mother turned a spare bedroom into a makeshift kitchen and cooked simple meals there. My father came and went in a fishing boat that was powered by a small outboard motor.
    Before long, the Red Cross began to pitch tents on high ground north of town. “We are staying in our house,” my father said.
    One night very late I was awakened by a tearing noise, like timbers creaking. Then I heard the rumbling sound of heavy things falling. I jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway. My parents were standing in the doorway to the den. The floor of the den had fallen through and all the treasures, including my mother’s china, that we had attempted to save, were now on the first floor beneath the steadily rising river.
    My mother had been courageous it seemed to me, through the ordeal of the flood. But the loss of the things she loved broke her resolve. That night she sat on the top of the stairs with her head on her crossed arms and cried. My father comforted her as best he could, but she was inconsolable.
    My father finally told me to go to bed, and I watched him help my mother to their room. In a few minutes he came to see me, to tell me everything would be all right and that my mother would be fine after a good night’s sleep.
    I wasn’t sure about that at all. There was a sound in her weeping that I had never heard before, and it troubled me. I wanted to help her feel better, but I couldn’t think of what I could possibly do.
    The next morning she made me breakfast, and I could tell how bad she still felt just by how cheerful she pretended to be.
    After breakfast, my mother said I could go downstairs and play in the rowboat. I rowed the boat once around the downstairs, staring into the dark water, but could see nothing. It was right then that I thought of trying to fish for my mother’s china.
    I carefully put a hook I cut from a wire coat hanger onto a weighted line. Then I let it sink until I felt it hit bottom. I began to slowly drag it back and forth. I spent the next hour or so moving the boat back and forth, dragging my line, hoping against hope to find one of my mother’s treasures. But time after time I pulled the line up empty.
    As the water rose day after day, I continued to try to recover something, anything, of my mother’s lost treasure. Soon, however, the water inside had risen to the stairway landing. On the day the water covered the rain gutters, my father decided we would have to seek shelter in the